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Hornet303 on 21 May 2013
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Interesting day for sure. I think gamers will be getting a wake up call. I surely do not have any real answers, but if you go by what already exists out there, this is how it will go down.

Games will be tied to your user account. Same thing as Steam. You log in, you see your list of games, you can download and install one if you haven't already done so. You can play your game. For a store bought copy, you insert your disc, install the content, and register it with your CD Key. MS has been using CD Keys for everything BUT games for years, no surprise there. Put the disc on the shelf, you most likely wont touch it again.

Now, it seems like MS will introduce something similar to how Amazon allows Kindle books to be traded (at publishers discretion of course). You "lend" the game to someone with an Xbox ID(gamertag). That person sees the game show up in their library for 2 weeks or so. The original owner no longer sees the game in his library. The "lendee" can download and play it all he wants, but the game will deactivate after the lend timer expires. The game now shows up in the "lender"'s library.

Also sounds like there will be a "sell" option. This will be the most interesting since there really isnt a digital model of this anywhere that I know of. A lot of questions come up. There is no "condition" status to be aware of. Allowing the sales of a game lower than the MS online store price would undercut MS, doubt they'll allow that. I imagine MS would love to be come the broker between the buyer and seller and charge a transaction fee. Maybe it will look like Blizzard's RMAH, where people bid on the rights to play a game. The seller gets the $ and the game is removed from his library.

One thing seems like a safe bet. The game being a physical piece of media days are going away. The value is not the disc, its the CD key that is attached to. I cant imagine that Sony is too far away from this as well, but its possible they dont adopt this model. Its a gutsy move for MS.. and im sure both camps are watching each other very closely how they implement this. Same reason why nobody is putting all their cards down yet.